A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

O, had I but followed the arts!

Everything is my demon muse. I have a muse which whispers in my ear and says, ‚Do this, do that,‘ but it’s my demon who provokes me.

I can’t make a song for a particular person or demographic. If I love it, I’m gonna do it. I have to perform it for the rest of my life. A song is like a tattoo – you can never get away from it.

I am a beneficiary of the American people’s generosity, and I hope we can have comprehensive immigration legislation that allows this country to continue to be enriched by those who were not born here.

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.

The two things in the world we all share in this world are laughter and pain. We’ve all got problems. The levels of those problems vary, but we’ve all got problems. When you can take things that are painful and make them funny, that’s a gift – to you and your audience.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.

Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.

My interest in creating anything is that it be useful.

If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.

If your culture doesn’t like geeks, you are in real trouble.

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?

I’m of the school of thought where, if you can’t sort something out for yourself, no one can help you. Rehab is great for some people but not others.

I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of, ‚What else can you do with a voice other than stand in front of a microphone and sing?‘

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

I actually don’t want a throne at all, because I don’t view myself as a queen; I view myself as one of my fans.

When I was a boy we didn’t wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

In business or in life, don’t follow the wagon tracks too closely.

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life.

I know that a large part of my fan base is gay. They’ve shown me love from the start. I mean in this industry, everyone from my glam people to my dancers are gay. You can’t be homophobic in this line of work – I’m a pop star!

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

Older people sit down and ask, ‚What is it?‘ but the boy asks, ‚What can I do with it?‘.

I got a fancy reputation. During high school, every puzzle that was known to man must have come to me. Every damn, crazy conundrum that people had invented, I knew.

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

I don’t pretend to understand the Universe – it’s a great deal bigger than I am.

In art the best is good enough.

A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

Sometimes you recognize that there is a category of human experience that has not been identified but everyone knows about it. That is when I find a term to describe it.

If you check your ego at the door when it comes to comedy, you’ve got a pretty good shot at making a great movie that you can commit yourself to, you can jump off the proverbial cliff with, and have a great time, and the audiences respond to that.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

I like being a writer.

Money can’t buy life.

Even after Independence, we have had to face the poison of casteism and communalism. How long these evils will continue? Whom does it benefit?

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

Music is changing so quickly, and the landscape of the music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

Read about history, and you become aware that nothing starts with us.

Science is a tool, and we invent tools to do things we want. It’s a question of how those tools are used by people.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

Youth is wasted on the young.

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.